Narrative inquiry in a nursing practicum.

Abstract

One approach to creating research-based nursing education is to think and write narratively about the daily life of a BScN program student and her teacher in diverse settings and over time. Gail, as a nurse-teacher, and Faith, as a nursing student and now Public Health Nurse, reconstruct their teaching-learning experiences in an integrated practicum in maternal-child health services as a narrative inquiry. After presenting this reconstruction of experience at a conference on maternal scholarship, further inquiry into their experiences shows how narrative inquiry matters to construction of nursing praxis and to life-long learning as a nurse. Teaching-learning relationships are seen as a template for a student's connections to people experiencing nursing care and to other clinicians. Construction of stories to live by that take into account becoming a nurse, constructing knowledge and enacting caring-healing nursing practices is illuminated through narrative inquiry.